<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Alan Grimes</b> <<a href="mailto:agrimes@speakeasy.net">agrimes@speakeasy.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
> Thanks for collecting the refs. The front page for the plurion<br>> is the swiki page:<br>> <a href="http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware/Plurion">http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware/Plurion</a><br>> It needs more google hits, so link to it! :)
<br><br>Okay,<br>Nice,<br>Fine.<br><br>Call me a cynical bastard but unless I can go down to the local<br>mega-mart and buy one for $1,000, or even $10,000, in a usable form, it<br>doesn't even exist, period.<br><br>It started when I started hearing hype around the Cell Broadband engine.
<br>For years I heard about it. Always my question was WHEN CAN I GET ONE?<br>Can I use it for general purpose computing? Can I put it in one of the<br>vacant 64x66 PCI slots in my machine?<br><br>As of today, it is still vaporware to me because I can only get it in a
<br>PSX3 which I am not in the market for at present, all other solutions<br>appear to be either too expensive or incompatible with my current system.<br><br>OpenSparc.net is another example of a fine if not perfect architecture
<br>that you'll never (within the forseeable future) be able to get your<br>hands on.</blockquote><div><br>This <a href="http://www.rhythmeering.com/2007/10/19/fpga-based-processors-move-forward/">FPGA implementation</a>
seems to be a sign of progress and it seems like the setup used can be had for <$10K. I agree we want to buy off the shelf, but shift is happening and that's a good thing. Given that many in the Smalltalk world know that there just has to be better integration, coming up with a plan of evolution would be in our collective best interests right?
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Unless you are intent on fueling my feelings of alienation and<br>disempowerment from the computing industry in general, just don't even
<br>mention this kind of thing. =\<br><br>--<br>Buy Ron Paul's Money! =)<br><a href="http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/ronpauldollar">http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/ronpauldollar</a><br>Soundest investment on the planet!
<br><br></blockquote></div><br>